How to Deprogram a Guy in 10 Days with Endless Thread

Welcome to your rung about, and welcome also to a rung about and endless thread crossover event, like on TGI Friday when Cory from Boy Me Swirl would write a letter to Erkel.

Or something. And with me today, our Ben and Amory Vemlas thread hello. Hello. Hello.

“Thank you so much for being here. Love a crossover. Ah, do you do? Is that a familiar reference to that happen?”

Yeah. But who's Erkel? And who's Cory? No, how dare don't say that. Oh god. No, that's very familiar, although I feel like you could convince me that it happened even if it didn't. If that makes sense. That's the thing too. Yeah. Well, and so you do a show where you're really. You're doing a lot of things, but I feel like partly investigating pop culture memory. Is that fair to say? Sure. Yeah. Oh, there's definitely some of that. A lot of Mandela affect popping up. Yeah, love a good Mandela fact.

A lot of internet, cultural mysteries. Yep. We'll take a stress into fact if that comes along. Oh, yeah. Did the fruit of the loom logo have a cornacopia? Still wrapping my head around that one. Okay. Don't tell us. I feel like people need to walk on over. Yeah. We described the show as to each other as unsolved mysteries untold histories and other weird stories from the internet. And that sort of

“encompasses everything. But that, yeah, that's what we kind of think about in tackle. Yeah.”

Well, and did you have a sense when you got started that you were going to be involved less in the far too serious issues of America's fascist takeover than perhaps you inevitably ended up being by working on the internet. Oh, man. It we did feel more friendly in 2017. I will say, which is odd, right? Because like this was all this stuff was in motion, but it was just like it had, I guess it hadn't gotten that far. And we were still, we thought we were so

grizzled, but in retrospect, we were like it was like our first time at the rodeo or something.

Yeah. No. Yeah. Fun fact, like endless thread sort of grew out of a story that someone at WBU did about a beautiful reddit thread where someone was soliciting letters for their dying uncle with Down syndrome. It was like this beautiful heartwarming story. And that was the thing. The internet coming together to be kind to everyone being kind to each other. Yeah. And it's all gone downhill from there. Yeah. And it's like, and so you're wrong about

“started in 2018. And I think it was based on this idea of like boy, howdy. She will occurs.”

There sure are a lot of stories where I feel like I'm doing like a Gemini cricket impression. Keep going. You're doing great. There sure are a lot of stories that we think we know, but we don't. And if we tell you the truth, then you'll remember and you'll learn them. And I mean, the thing is that like a lot of people do listen because they want the truth and they're extremely curious. And I feel like that's maybe the most heartening thing. Certainly for me about making

the show over the past like decade. But that I think that, you know, Michael and I began making the show out of the sense of like, not to speak for him because he's probably was like, why is there about this than I was? But I definitely came to it with the sense of like,

really to me like incredible innocence of like, you know, now that we have the internet and

information can travel faster, people can learn the truth faster and more also. And it's like, yeah, yeah, but there's other stuff that they prefer to learn that a lot of people are, you know, that's getting around as well. Yeah. Well, we, I feel like, yeah, I feel like years ago, I would sort of come to these topics in this sort of general value of the internet as it's sort of like a neutral, you know, sort of like, yeah, there's a lot of good. There's a lot of bad. It's fun.

Yeah, we just got a, yeah, it's a series of tubes. And now I have to say that I have like, my operating stance is, you know, more undersege than like, yeah, let's figure it out together. Like, you know, and I think, I think we're all a little more jaded than we were in 2017 and 2018. Yeah, which is good. We don't want to learn nothing. Yeah. I agree with the, let's figure it out together. But I, I have definitely increasingly become more of the, let's figure it out together,

offline kind of person where I think I even said to Ben sometime last year, like, I don't know if I can keep scrolling man. Like, yeah, I'm getting off of more platforms. And that means that I'm finding

And then I, yeah, you know, and then something great, Laura's you back. You know, yeah.

Like, there was a, that's an old sketch about the girl on TikTok with the buttons. I was amazed by that.

“I don't know this one. I'm out of the loop. That's okay. I kind of, okay, here's the thing.”

I got it. I stand by this person because there was like someone on TikTok was like, okay, for the new year, I want to have like 365 buttons just like keep track of time or whatever of a sense of time. And then, like, what are you going to do with the buttons? Like, are you going to sew them on something or are you going to like, move them from one container to the other? Like, what are they for? And she was like, I don't have to explain it to you. I'm not going to,

I don't have to tell you about it. And it just became like people were so embarrassed by this.

And I really come to my life. Go away. Yeah, like I get it. It's such a phenomenon. But it's

someone who like has been making, I was thinking about this earlier. Actually, I've been publishing writing online since 2012. That was what I started off doing. And of course, before that, I was on live journal starting in 2004. As one does, especially when one is writing newsies fan fiction. And this is a fun thing about you that I did not know. It's a biographical detail that gets a little bit funnier with every year about me possibly. And, and then, you know, that I've

been doing the show since 2018 and was on like Twitter a lot back when Twitter was really fun. Yeah. And there is this like, and I imagine for this TikTok or this fatigue that comes with people asking you to to explain every single thing you say every day where I, I like to think that maybe she gets hit a wall. And it was like, I do not have to tell you what I'm doing with these buttons. You just like have a little imagination and figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

Didn't, you don't have to, I don't have to tell you everything on the internet all the time. I talked once on my show you are good. I think about doing this thing I called movie hat. I actually stole this idea from my friends Colin and Andy went at who like, I think they guys called with that too. And you write down movies you want to see on slips of paper and then put them in like just something and shake it up because it's based on the idea of like,

throw it in the hat. Yeah. Yeah, your ideas in the hat and cast or, you know, whatever. But so the hat can be a jar. And I got that that's confusing. This is my button moment. But I like explained movie hat where like you write down movies you generally want to see and then shake it up and pull out one slip and you're like, tonight we're watching Diablo Leak because

“that's what movie hat says. And then like a bunch of people are like, but where is movie hat?”

I've searched on the app store for movie hat and I can't find it. I can't find movie hat. And I was just, you have to build your own movie hat app in real life. Yeah, I'm just like, I'm not, I explained it perfectly. I need people to make their own movie hat. I can't contribute to the decline of Western civilization like this. But Sarah, I don't understand your how does a jar I'm confused, but the jar. But what are the buttons for? Am I, what do you think about the

3065 buttons? Who's sorry? You know, anything is important issue. Any ounce of joy that we can squeeze out of this life in these times. I am all for. So if you want 365 buttons. So you're just pro everyone. I'm pro. I mean, truly, like, if you are not hurting anyone right now, you're doing a lot better than most people. So yeah, collect those buttons. Put them in a hat, put them in a jar, get those buttons. Hide them around your house. Tell people what you're doing with them or not.

You know, never tell people what you're doing with your buttons. They don't have to know that about

you. It's okay. People know everything else about you. They don't have to know what you're doing with your buttons. That's right. Well, so I, I have called you here today to our meeting of the Midnight Society, Ben and Emory. Do you believe I love it? To get through this thing called life. And we're doing a show that I have, I have been calling to myself. This isn't, I'm not married to this title, but it is catchy. How did he program a guy in 10 days? And the idea, I guess, is to kind of

call on your experience because you've done so much investigative work in this kind of counter-factual landscape that we live in on both the silliest and the most serious levels. And I guess, you know, there isn't so much difference between them at the end of the day sometimes. That, you know, we were talking about things that you could come on this show and talk about with me, because you were so generous as to have me on and talk to me about my satanic panic show, the doubling

now, which, of course, gets, gets internety there at the end. But to talk about maybe this

“question of, you know, because I've been thinking with the satanic panic stuff, I think we”

just been talking about this, how in my opinion, having done this research and abusive family

the time as a dictatorship. And this question of what do you do when the cult has to disband because the leader dies or something. And just that despite how few of the hopes I had 10 years ago have

been born out, there will continue to be people who, despite satanic cost fallacy being as powerful

as it is, despite all the things we've observed are going to look up one day and have to walk away from, you know, from kind of, I guess the Magical and this worldview that has required a lot of sacrifice from people and not really had any reward as far as I can tell. And what kind of you found in your work of what it takes to allow people to do that, how that can happen, what it can look like. And I didn't think it's kind of what insight your work has given you into the capacity that

the people still can have to change their minds. Well, I like the, how to deprogram a guy in 10

“days if they come, if we think of each day kind of like how I think about a year in podcast years where”

it's like one year of your podcast existing is actually 10 years in the industry or what would be a normal industry. So if a day is say who knows what measurement of time, but longer than a day, I think we do hopefully have some things to offer in that arena. I believe it. Well, and it's also so interesting that you, you know, you're making me think more about the history of our show because it is true that in the beginning we were really just kind of like going down kind of fun

and silly rabbit holes and we still do that. Right. But you know, some of our first episodes,

I think we're about, they were about people helping each other. They were about that the famous story of the guy getting sucked out of the windshield of the plane. Oh, yeah.

“And people grabbing onto the pilot and holding onto them until they got landed and things like that.”

Yeah. But then we started like finding all of these, I feel like we started finding these debates about what was real and what was fake and what was true and what was not. And I'm wanting to say one of the early ones we did was another silly one, which is like this piece of audio, there was this like 24 hour debate about Janie versus Laurel. Does that? Oh, my, I was just thinking about that and trying to be more than any word. Yeah. Oh, my God. I might have listened to

you guys talking about that actually. Absolutely. That was like such a fun early one. Yeah. But I feel like more and more we've started to, you know, get into these spaces where there is a lot of debate and see a lot of debate and without, you know, raising the terrible present specter of AI that feels very all around us right now. I feel like it's just become more and more common in the work that we do. And we've done some pretty

very different kinds of stories where there are kind of similar themes and there, they're often, yeah, they often get into this world of, yeah, I guess like how to deprogram people or how to have people talk to each other about something they really, really, really, really strongly disagree about and bringing people over to the, you know, exposing my bias here, maybe like what I would

“describe as the rational, reasonable science-based, fact-based side of any issue. And I think we've,”

we've done some, yeah, we've done some stories about that and I feel like over time have learned mostly just learned from the people that we've talked to. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting about Yany and Laurel right off the bat is that sort of a spoiler, there is a sort of right answer about what that piece of audio actually is. The same way that there's a right answer about whether the dress is blue and black or white and gold. And the difference is in how we see it or what

frequencies our ears here, but there is a truth at the center of it. And that when we talk about deprogramming someone, right off the bat, you're talking about maybe one group of people who want

to deprogram another group of people, but that other group of people might think that the first

group of people are actually the ones who need deprogramming. And whether there is an actual right, the same way that there is a, the dress is blue and black, you know, it's some things are more up for debate than others and some things are more subjective than others. And so in thinking about even just this conversation deprogramming, there's like a big flashing caveat at the, at the top to say, we're talking about deprogramming in general, but we might not be thinking about that we might not

if, if the first year of endless thread, let's say dip to more towards the like positive and

silly, who knows how it actually shook out. But if it was more positive and silly, we kicked off 2019 with a series called Infectious, which was all about anti-vaxxers, the history of anti-vaxxers in the US, how they have come to believe that vaccines are dangerous. And, you know, right off the

“bat in that series, we have an episode, the title of which I think I'm still, I don't, I think you”

came up with this one then, but I'm still proud of it on our behalf, which is Scab's Puss and Puritans. Oh, that is good. And it tells the story of, we familiar with Cotton Mather, Sarah.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not like, you know, I haven't done a ton of course work on the Mather's

but yes, I know that there were two of them. They were father and son. There was a cotton and an increase, and they said a whole bunch of scary stuff all the time. They're very good. They nailed it. They nailed it. They nailed it. They nailed it. They nailed it. The increase detail that his father's name was increased was was new information to me when we were reporting that. Thank you, Liz Sappy. Yeah. Yes. So, so he was this Puritan minister who in the, in the 1700s in Boston, there is a

terrifying smallpox outbreak. And, you know, most people were walking around with the evidence of smallpox either having had smallpox issues with, with costume dramas, by the way, is not enough

“pox. Not enough. You see, costume drama, people have pox scars. Yeah. You should have those bumpy faces. Come on.”

None of the bumpy faces. Yeah. Too pristine. And, you know, too much filler, but that's, you know, on top of the pox issue, which is my main problem. So, as a cotton Mather, he hasn't slaved someone who has a scar, and he inquires about this scar, and this person that he's enslaved says, we had to get the smallpox to avoid the smallpox, basically. And so, he's talking about being scratched with a little bit of the, the pus of someone who had smallpox in his home country.

And that prevented him from getting full blown smallpox. And this was, this was revolutionary to cotton

Mather. And it was a really weird scary thing to think about at the time that you would give yourself a little bit of this horrific virus in order to try to prevent yourself from getting full

“blown smallpox. Do we know this enslaved person's name or is it just lost to the sands of time?”

Well, yes and no. So, yeah, it's, it's the, the, the enslaved person's name is, is not actually their real name. Is near us. We can tell. And it's an interesting, I mean, one of the things that's funny about this story, too, is like, and I don't know, maybe I'm giving away the punchline here, but cotton Mather gets ends up getting completely credited, by the way, with like saving Boston from the smallpox outbreak. Yeah, go look, because he's close personal friends with God. It makes

total exactly more. Yeah, God's, yeah, he's picking up the God phone. But the actual person, you know, who like made this happen was this enslaved person in in cotton Mather's house. Yeah, who was like actually bringing this idea to like, you know, 1700s Boston, but it was a much older idea. And someone who you trust enough to to save Boston, but not to be freed. Exactly. Interestingly, for the Puritans, yeah, he called him "Onesimus," which we're not sure exactly

had a pronouncement. "Onesimus," which means useful. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear indeed. But at the time, you know, there's a group that forms called the Society of Physicians Antionoculators. And this is, you could say today, is like the earliest anti-vaccine group in the country. And it's led by one of the only official MDs in the area at the time. And so cotton Mather was the one who was conducting these weird seemingly dangerous experiments. And most people saw them as such.

Yeah. And it just kind of speaks to the idea that, you know, mainstream thinking can flip flop and become fringe and it has. And this is vaccines are a perfect example of this. Great. Well, and also, and it seems like that maybe vaccine at the time was the, you know, was something that if you haven't really tested something and you're advocating using it on a large human population, then I don't care what it is. You know, it's, I don't care if it's milk. I want, I want more data.

you know, in the beginning, the vaccinators and the inoculators were the weird ones, right? They

were the ones who were like, okay, we're just, I guess we're just going to try this. We're going to try this in our houses. And then we're going to try to get a bunch of people to do it. And Dr. William Douglas, the person who's leading this opposition group, which also was like a surprise to me that when you go back to the beginning of this history, that, you know, people think of anti-vaxxers or vaccine hesitant people or resistance to vaccination as being a relatively new

development. And, you know, in our, in our experience and our lived experience, but it was going on

“since the beginning. And I think that's because the science in the beginning was weird and experimental”

and one might say not pretty non-scientific, right? It was like, this person, I think they, they know how to do this thing. That's, you know, going to save us all. Let's, let's try it on a couple of people and see how it works out. Well, yeah, and then I think we also weren't really taught that history. Because I certainly, you know, was, and I realize there's only so much time we have for this type of thing, but taught history with this view of like, and then science figured

this out and everyone, everyone was like, yeah, that makes sense. And they all did it, you know, and I mean, also I'm sure there was stuff that I guess kind of didn't pay enough attention to. But I feel like having, having experience, what we are experiencing, I would want to teach history with more of an emphasis on, you know, just the behavior of people being anything, but monolithic consistently, you know, and things like, you know, this kind of different from what

“we're talking about. But the fact that there were, you know, a lot of very loud isolationists”

before and during World War II, based on, you know, partly on just sort of this idea of old-fashioned American anti-Semitism and painting America sort of as the protagonist of most

historical events and the American people as basically an agreement, except during the Civil War,

feels like a disservice to sort of, I don't know, the history that we could learn to be able to better understand what we're going through right now. Yeah. And then also helps us deprogram people by understanding and acknowledging that the history is mixed, right, that it's not actually just this way or just that way, that they're, like, there, there, there were experiments that have gone wrong. There are things that have happened that have been huge, huge disasters,

and, you know, you can, you can acknowledge that stuff while still maintaining a position that's, like, you know, whatever a science-based, in fact, based when you're talking about the efficacy

“of vaccines. But I think often this stuff gets turned into this because there's been flip-flopping”

in the past, people get scared to even acknowledge how messy the past is, right? Because they feel like they're, like, giving ground up. And I actually think, like, when you're, if we're talking

about how to deprogram somebody in 10 days, part part of the answer is like, acknowledge even more

days. But it's even worse. Or even worse. Right. Yeah. It is good. 10 days, asterisk. Signprint. My, like, maybe. Yeah. Like, just acknowledging that stuff is actually helpful, because it builds rapport with the person that you're trying to bring around. I think the thing, it continuing to trace the history, the thing about this that sort of broke my brain, shattered me a little bit, is that if you keep tracing it through the 20th century, and you get to

the counter culture of the sixties and the seventies, when there is quite a bit of authority being questioned, and you have things like the feminist movement, which, you know, offshoot of that is the women's health movement. And growing out of that is people asking more and more questions about doctors, and, and doctors having the end all be all word, and maybe doctors aren't telling us about all the risks associated with certain procedures and medications. And maybe we do need

to educate ourselves and advocate for ourselves. And we do, you know, we should have control over whether we become pregnant or not. We need to be empowered over our bodies. And in time, some of those questions end up getting applied to that generation's children, and saying, oh, well, we, we should have control over our children, and whether they're getting vaccinated or not, there's an empowerment in the skepticism and the right to be skeptical and to exercise that skepticism.

Yeah, I feel like that, and then it's like it comes around to the fact that a lot of the people, you know, kind of leading the the whole anti-vax ID, and it's most recent iteration is that they're kind of bad at being skeptical, because the point of being skeptical is to want to assess information on your own. And in fact, it feels like we have sort of something else with the mask of skepticism on when really it turns into something that is more comforting and easier to do,

which is blind rule following, but following someone else's rules, and then letting them tell

got, we got stuck a lot. And this feels like a very sort of like part of the culture of American

“liberalism in the past 10 years has been, you know, the famous, I brought this up recently,”

but you know, the little yard sign or whatever of like in this house, we believe science, you know, and just this kind of idea of like science couldn't hurt a fly, and it's like, well, science has broken some very precious eggs for very little reason to make some very pointless omelets. Yeah. And it's not doing anyone favors to pretend that didn't happen, you know? Yes. Totally. Yeah. People did die in the early inoculation experiments, and it led to, you know,

modernized vaccination, which has saved millions and millions of lives, and both things are true.

And if you can't, you can't handle them both, you're in trouble. Right. We talked to this guy

as part of that reporting this guy, Ian McColley, and he was such an interesting example because he got the polio vaccine and he got polio. And there was an error in how it was administered to him.

“So it's less likely than your typical tiny percentage of people who might get it from the vaccine.”

But, you know, again, like Ian McColley was a great person to talk to because on the one hand, he's like, yeah, I got polio from the vaccine and on the other hand, he was like, everyone should absolutely get the polio vaccine. So, so part of that, like you're saying, part of acknowledging, you know, the broken eggs and the omelets that were pointless, like leads people to make their own decisions, hopefully, in a direction that is, is positive for everyone.

Right. Yeah. And I'll say, you know, and that you don't, you can't demand people's trust while also not giving them the whole truth. Yeah. Which is tricky because I realized that if there's one thing we like to indicate as Americans, it's that we really would prefer not to handle the truth. But if you, if you try and make us do it anyway, you know, sometimes it works. That's right. Well, and that, this speaks a little bit to why people get

programmed in the first place is, you know, when we, when we were talking to some parents who would

label themselves as vaccine hesitant, some of that hesitation or what, what was hesitation turned into opposition to vaccines for some of them is a conversation with a doctor that really ended up not being a conversation because they tried to raise concerns and felt very quickly shut down like, oh, God, here's another one. Like, here's the packet out of my way. We're getting your child vaccinated. They just felt totally dismissed. And that pushed them further in the

direction. What, what might have been skepticism, a normal amount of skepticism got turned up to 10 because they just didn't feel listened to. And so we can, right, we can push people further in one direction simply and how we talk to them about something that they are uncertain of. Yeah. Well, that seems like, you know, again, like evidence of this bigger systemic problem that so many people are experiencing where it feels like, you know, you're made to feel lucky to be

able to see a doctor at all. And then they, same as if they only have about 18 seconds. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. And if you're, if you're purposely going into a situation where you are trying to change someone's mind, you know, it's maybe a statement of the obvious, but if you're a jerk to them, and you're like right off all their questions and tell them they're stupid, that's not, that's not going to work. That's a bad place to start. Right. You know, that's,

that's part of what the professionals say about deprogramming people, right, is like be careful about your language, talk about your own experience, ask questions, don't tell people, don't say, you know, you're stupid, you're wrong, you know, you're... Don't say you're wrong about it. Yeah. We're starting off on the right foot. I got to say. Great title for a show, though. It's good.

“But you have to, yeah, you just have to build that trust in it. You know, if you don't have”

a situation where you're, you're building that trust, then of course people are going to, they're going to say, oh, screw this person. I'm going to go over here and try to figure out the truth. And then, you know, wherever they end up going for the truth, might be even more problematic. It also occurs to me that, like, probably in the past, it was easier to make yourself feel better by denouncing someone by calling them stupid or ignorant. And at this point,

to me, it seems like the only thing that really matters is willingness to try and learn, you know,

I do my own research. And you're like, okay, can I tell you? So number is, and they're like, no.

“Yeah, we were talking about this the other day with regards to the change my view,”

subreddit, and how people are going on there and saying change my view about X. And, you know, we had an example recently on the show that was something light, but it was about like the correct way to open a banana. So a person is going into that subreddit, clearly with like a strong, held belief about, in this case, opening a banana. But the very fact that they're posting in that subreddit, at least if they're doing so in good faith, comes with the idea that they're open

to their view being changed. They are ready to hear other information. And it doesn't mean that their view will be changed, but that is actually kind of a hopeful place, I think, on the internet, in the sense that when the person is actually posting in good faith, they're saying, okay,

show me what you got, give me what you got. Here's what I think. And, and you do see,

and those posts sometimes going like, all right, I hear you. Okay. So we need a little bit more of that,

“I think, because the shutting down and the, I think isolation is really a key ingredient in how”

people fall down. Some rabbit hole from which they might need to be deprogrammed, and whether it's isolation of a, just a doctor that doesn't even want to hear your concerns. Or actual isolation of, you know, we talked to someone who had fallen down the QAnon rabbit hole. His name was Jeterth Jedeja. And Jeterth told us, I think, from the very simple question of just, you know, how would you describe yourself, Jeterth? He says, well, I have bipolar disorder. I have epilepsy. I have ADHD.

He had this like list of mental health issues that he led with. And that kind of set the stage for him telling the story of falling down the QAnon rabbit hole, which is he's, you know, he's not feeling well. He has isolated himself from his friends in this period of time that he falls down the rabbit hole, because he just feels overwhelmed by a lot of things in life. And Trump had just won the 2016 election,

and every new source that he had been watching at the time told him that was never going to happen

basically. And so he starts consuming Alex Jones, because Alex Jones was one of the people at the time saying, Trump is going to win. Trump is going to win. And he goes, maybe this is the person I should be following. They seem to have the answers. He's surrounded by gold. He's surrounded by gold. And he's surrounded by gold at a time when his mental health sets him up to fall down a rabbit hole, that he really might not have fallen down otherwise. Yeah. And Jeterth was interesting, too,

because Jeterth told us, like, I used to be a libertarian left-wing guy. Get rid of student dad, et cetera, et cetera. A sealed ex files track. He started off as a low government in the end, and not been chewing on. That's right. And he really took this hard, hard turn. And Emory,

“you could talk about how he got out. But I think it was this kind of thing where he felt really”

isolated. And we did a couple of episodes about QAnon and talk to people who dealt with QAnon. And one of the things in the same episode where we talk about Jeterth or talk to Jeterth, I had this, like, really weird thing happened to me, where I was, uh, it was 2018 Thanksgiving. And I did the Thanksgiving tradition of going out the night before Thanksgiving in my hometown and seeing all the people I used to go to high school with, which I don't know

why I did that to myself. But I did that, and I got an a lift on the way home and started talking to the guy who was driving the lift. And he, as soon as I told him what I did, he was like, "Oh, Reddit, he was like, do you know about Q?" And he just went off on, you know, Q, and how Donald Trump was working with the secret government agent and the whole QAnon story. And he was in so deep, like he had dates. He knew exactly what was going to happen over the next

six months. And he was telling me all about it. And it was really, it actually freaked me out, like being in this car with this guy, I got freaked out. And I purposely got out of the lift before my house, because I was like, I don't want this guy to know where I live. He seems unhinged. And then I left my phone in the car. Oh my God. And so then, like, I spent the next day trying to get the phone back from this guy. And he came to the dinner. He came to, he came back

to where I was eating Thanksgiving dinner. And I was so thankful that I could get him, I could get him back. And I got I had $40 for him. And I made him a giant plate of food. And I was like,

he gave me my phone. He had parked in the street. And I tried to give him the food. And he,

“he started crying. And he was like, my mother died a year ago today. And I told myself that I”

wouldn't eat today. And he sort of got out of the car. And he was like, almost, I was worried he was going to like walk into traffic. And I got him to the side of the road. And he was like, super distraught. And I give him a hug. And he said, thank you. And he got back in the car and drove away. But it just struck me that he had described his discovery of cue. And it really had happened during this year. Yeah. After this like super traumatic thing had happened to him. He went deep into

cue. And I'm not saying that it's guaranteed. Obviously, that this was the thing. But I think there's a lot of trauma behind our really strong opinions to. Yeah. And that's like a thing that we have to acknowledge and understand when people have a really strong place that they're coming from. And that that's part of it, too. And we have to be cognizant of that. And it was, but I think it was the same with Chetarith where he was really isolated, feeling alone,

had some really serious stuff going on in his life. And that that can be a real trigger for you, ending up in a place where you have these really, really strong intense feelings and beliefs about

“something. And it's, and it's, you're not always looking at it as objectively as you should be.”

Yeah. And he also said that like cue brought him so much joy for the first time in a while because

he felt like he had this, this new sense of purpose in life, this new sort of, yeah, meaning that he was a warrior for this information that only, yeah. Well, yeah. And that like that only a certain group of people know the actual truth. And, and I have to, I'm fighting the good fight for that information. And it was, like, he said it was like, he was like an addict for this information. He couldn't stop talking about it because it invigorated, like, infused his life with something

that it was missing before. And so if we're going to keep people from falling down these rabbit holes, like, we have to confront the void before conspiracies fill it. Yeah. And it does feel like a conspiracy theory and becoming a big believer in it. I mean, there's so many things that can dry you to that and one of them is, you know, good old fashioned mania. But another, I feel like, yeah, it's that, like, the kind of, like, lack of meaning in life or lack of, lack of a feeling of

meaning or a feeling of feeling connected with other people or with a community. And that it, I mean, it's been such a such a long time now in a way. But I mean, I feel like it's, is it fair to say that at least in its original iteration that kind of the, the Q and on fandom, I guess, uh, was

I read it as like fanfiction of at least the first term of the Trump presidency. And it was like,

all these ways that you could decode what appeared to be happening, which was hard to explain sometimes. Right. Because, you know, it would appear to be like a racist and small-time criminal who had accidentally become president. And now, you know, you could kind of like get his ear if you gave him a bunch of pink starburst. But in fact, according to Q and on, it was really this like complex web of codes and, you know, just, it was, it was like this web of symbolism. It was, it was like playing

missed or reading T. S. Eliot or something where in reality, Trump was going to find all of the child sexual abusers and get them a mission that he has undertaken with great restraint. It must be said. But that, you know, but this idea that every day you got to wake up and see not what all these idiots thought was happening, but what was really happening and have a community about it. Like, it feels like, I feel like when people talk about the male loneliness epidemic. Like,

a the type I've seen that I agree with most is that there's just a human loneliness epidemic and men are about half of that. And we're focusing on them more. And B, that it feels like the proposed care for the male loneliness epidemic proposed by men interestingly is that if women have sex with them, then they won't all be so lonely. So it gives me to lower our standards. Which I don't think is

“that I think community is the answer and it feels like Q and on was like, I don't know what I want to”

call it a community substitute. But do you think that that became an actual community for people? Oh, definitely. I think so. You know, you see this stuff at rallies and, you know, political rallies and stuff to you and people are so amped there. So I mean, like, I feel like the Charlie Kirk public event after his death felt that way to me where there was a community coming together.

on necessarily, but I guess I'm just saying, like, I think there is absolutely community

in strongly held beliefs. Yeah. And I don't think there's there's probably not a lot of newsies, fanfic and Q and on crossover. There's got to be a little. And that's worrying me. You'd be the one to tell us. I don't want to know how to, you know, there's some things that I are about our left-on learned. But I do think, you know, folks are looking for community and they, you know, that when they find community and whatever that, you know, if that community is a

skepticism of vaccines community, if it's a community that is that Donald Trump is, you know,

“working with a secret government agent to disassemble a deep state like that can be a community too.”

Right. I see it maybe slightly differently where I wouldn't doubt that it is a community of sorts,

but it's sort of like a, when you're on social media and you feel like you're interacting with

your friends because you're commenting on their, their posts or their pictures or whatnot. And there is community in that there's more connection there than there would be if you hadn't commented at all. But it's, it's not the same as sitting down with a muffin. And I don't know why I picked a muffin, but sitting down with the muffin equals community. And I do feel like some of this was greatly exacerbated by the fact that there was a false, a false sense of community, a very

shallow, false sense of community around ideas that got people really energized without actually being really connected to each other. Well, to use the newsiest fandom as an example. Right. It's like, you come together because you all love newsies. And then you look around and you realize that you're all by sexual 15 year olds. And you're like, well, all right. You know, all of Santa or something like that. Right. They're like, they're all these things that drop

people together. And then it's like, once you know, once you're there, you've got to figure out

what the real thing is. Yeah. Yeah. Always on Kidori. But like, it's easier to be a community

when you're nameless and faceless on the internet than it is in real life. Well, and I guess the question is like, what is that community for? And how is that affected by the way that it's created? Because if you're a community because you have a shared enemy, even when you invented, then, you know, how will you grow around that? And will you sort of find that, you know, because I'm sure that like some people who were brought together by Q and on, like, did find things that they had

in common outside of this. And then that could create real bonds so that there was the capacity for that. But it also feels like, you know, that that gets into sort of the part of the area of community feeling where you're just in a cult where also then it's like, you're brought together by beliefs and ideas. But then if you start to question them, then the threat, you know, implicitly at least is

“that that is going to be taken away from you because there are things that you have to believe”

and enemies that you have to share or else you don't get to have this community anymore. That's right. And I also think like, this is why I think people say when you're trying to deprogram someone that getting specific is important because you start to like you're saying, you start to, you know, when you are face to face with people and you're interacting with the community, you start to realize, hopefully you start to realize why you're really together,

why you're really getting together and like, what is the actual thing that's wrong you together? And maybe it's the thing that, you know, you started with and maybe it's not. And getting specific when you talk to people helps you figure that out, I think helps you set out like the why of why you're, you know, involved in this thing. And also, you start to learn other people's logic for their decisions. And I remember when we were doing some of the vaccine

reporting, you know, we met a family outside of a grocery store in Portland, Oregon.

“Actually, I think it was in Clark County. We talked to this family and they were like,”

they were kind of like half in half out. Like they were a little bit skeptical. They had like several kids. They were doing it on a different schedule. Yeah, they like did a different vaccine schedule. That's right. Yeah, they just had decided that they were going to, I think give their kids most of the vaccines. They weren't sure about the chicken pox vaccine, but they just wanted to do it on a different timeline. Yep. And they felt immediately dropped into the

anti-vax bucket for not wanting to vaccinate their kids on the schedule that at least the CDC at the time. Yeah. It was was following. Yeah, I remember the mother, she was sort of like, you know, I'd rather that my kids get chicken pox. They're not going to die from chicken pox. I'm just saying this is what she said, right? Right. So why am I vaccinating them for chicken pox? And she said,

right? And I think I don't know if you can literally die from chicken pox, but I know that there

can be very dire consequences or I'll see, you know, it's like, you can get shingles later on in life. It's much, you know, you know, all these reasons medically why it's much better to be vaccinated. And if I had kids, I would, I would absolutely vaccinate them against everything I could think of. But also, I was exposed to chicken pox intentionally when I was a kid as probably everyone in the 90s when your moms would just be like, all right, go get chicken pox. We got to do it now.

It's going to be worse if we wait. Yep. Same. And that was kind of, I don't know. It was like fun. And it's also nice that that doesn't have to happen. It's just something that we get to share and lord over our children one day, I guess. But all, you know, but at the same time, right? Like, I look at it as epic. And I'm very, you know, a conspiracy theory minded about that one. I don't

“think it's really, I don't even have to see myself as a conspiracy theorist. I think it's just a”

medication that has never been adequately tested on humans that now is being handed to the consumer.

And the citizens of a large godfaring nation are being used as its guinea pigs. And we have no idea what the long-term side effects are and also people are making so much money. You know? So again, it's like the impulse to question the motivations behind big pharma that is part of all this is like, I don't ever want to act like that's dumb because obviously seeing the nefariousness behind, you know, the choices that we're able to make for ourselves medically. Like, you shouldn't tell

people that not see that. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that's, that's another interesting piece where like, again, if you're trying to deprogram someone and tend to a deprogram a guy and tend to

is like, and you're getting specific and starting to talk to them and also being curious and also

acknowledging the sort of mixed past that has led to where we are, whatever topic you're talking about. I do think that that is part of it is like, yeah, I'm skeptical of giant mega, you know,

“multinational corporations and I think you should be. I think you should be asking questions about”

that stuff. I think you should be thinking about things like, you know, a good scientific testing. And, you know, I similar feelings about his epic myself and I, and you might end up realizing that you have more in common with this person than you think you do. And again, that can sort of like build this trust. Another thing that they say, right, is that you, if the person is close to you, you have to actually spend, believe it or not, you have to spend more time with them, not less.

Sorry, if it feels safe, if it feels safe to do so, right? Because again, you sort of build this common language and trust and rapport and like you understand that you both like neither of you are necessarily like a huge, you are just going to like take whatever big pharma throws at you, right? And that starts to build this foundation where you can, you can pull them out of wherever they are in that is, is maybe less reasonable and less of a shared perspective.

Yeah, and that's, that's where the, the ten days asterisk comes in. There's, there's so, there's so much patience required in that approach. And, and for some people, it's really not possible. We had done this episode right after the 2024 election where someone didn't feel like they could spend time with a family member. It was a trans person who felt like they couldn't spend time with a family member who did not acknowledge their identity as their true self. And that is understandable. But if you

can spend more time with them and you can just build more trust overall and maybe you're just hanging out and doing the kind of like common ground-ish activities of, well, hate is politics, but we both like the patriots or whatever and another weird example coming from me specifically, but if there are, it would be finding more like a commonality with someone who hates the patriots,

“I think maybe, but go on. I think that's the main thing to look for. Just football, in general,”

yeah. I mean, and I feel like no one should ever feel like they have to spend time with their family for truly any reason. Fair. But it does feel like part of the situation where in, yeah, is like people relying on media as kind of a community substitute. And of course, that's been sold to us as well. And then the fact that when we try and picture each other, we often see caricatures that have been sort of given to us as opposed to having real people to associate those ideas with.

Yeah. What I think that gets that in terms of whether you spend time with the family member or not, the question is, do you want to deprogram this person? You know, if you do, and it feels safe to spend time with them, then you go for it. And if you feel like they are, well, maybe not a lost cause,

someone else gets yours. It's right if it's healthier for you to not deprogram that person in

“particular, that is also understandable. Well, and so in terms of the stories that you've reported on”

and experienced in the past, I don't know, however many areas of American life this has been, I'm curious, because kind of personally about like, what do you think of when you think of someone changing their mind in this way or about this kind of deprogramming idea? Are there examples that come to mind? Yeah. I mean, we could go back to Jeterra, Threat, Emory, and the way in how he kind of came out of it. Yeah. What was that like for him? Yeah. So it's funny with Jeterra because he was so

deep into QAnon and yet the thing that pulled him out was pretty small comparatively. So he

comes across this video online that has to do with a very particular theory around QAnon, which is that the phrase "tippy top," Trump saying the phrase "tippy top," was sort of like "tippy top," "tippy top," he doesn't say that a lot or at least he didn't tell you about that. Yeah. No, that is one of his favorites. And Q followers thought that this was a sort of like dog whistle to them and that this held some larger significance. I mean, there was that episode of Seinfeld where George wanted to

change a woman's answering machine tape and then the code word for what she was getting too close just to go "Tippy top," "Tippy top," so you know I'm sure I'm gonna stress it in. It all goes back to Seinfeld. Yeah. And so he watches this one video that shows that Trump had actually been using "Tippy top," long before he ever ran for public office. Oh, no. It all fell apart. I mean, it was these, it was these tiny like seeds of doubt. Yeah, and that actually gives me a lot of hope because you

don't know what is going to sew a seed of doubt. And there are people who would say that like doubt is the way out. Doubt is how you like claw your own way out. And there's sort of like some Jedi mind trick stuff going on with deep programming where it is helpful if you can make someone think that this was their idea. If you can put right material in front of them, whether it's someone who has, if it's a, you know, a cult, if it's someone who has left that cult

and found their way out and you are helping them find that information without necessarily holding the mirror so obviously up to them and accusing their exact beliefs. It's going to be a lot easier for that person to sort of like doubt freely within their own mind without you looking over their shoulder and going, you know, are you, are you with me yet? Right. So it can be something

“so small and whatever you can do to to sew a seed of doubt is, is helpful. Well, and I think too”

that there's like the joy of conspiracy making conspiracy theorizing is the same in a way as the joy of figuring out the truth or doubting or thinking like, oh my god, what if Tippy top is just like, I found evidence of him saying in 2008, we're getting to the bottom of Tippy top, you know, and like, I feel like that can be not a satisfying in the sense that you think you found your theory of everything, right? But that it feels good to like dig into reality in that way,

I really believe. Yeah, and I think it feels even better if you can really sort of either literally or figuratively wrap your arms around that person when they do come out of it, because the truth feels good, but it also, you do lose some of that sort of like greater purpose. Oh, no, I thought we were all, I thought, I believe the phrase is the truth hurts, Samurai. I believe that the truth, yeah, the truth hurts. And if you are making sure that there is not

some new void created that will be filled with something else, but then you are there to fill the void and be there for the person as they are sort of like, I don't know if mourning a loss is a fair analogy, but you're mourning a loss of something, of some way of thinking that was kind of intoxicating, and now you need a new, you need a new source of support. Sarah, do you know the Herman Cana Ward? Oh my gosh, wait, I might. I feel like it's not for something good.

What is that? That's correct. That's correct. You don't want to get it.

“You may remember that presidential candidate and Republican politician Herman Cana, so he was”

Herman Cana is somewhat infamous, one could say, for basically questioning COVID pretty intensely,

tweeting that the disease was not deadly dying from complications of COVID. And so of course, there is a subreddit, and there are internet communities based around this idea of the Herman Cana Ward, and we did an episode about this and talk to some of the moderators from that subreddit,

but essentially the idea is taking people who are basically attacking COVID as like a hoax, et cetera,

et cetera, online, and then sort of following what happens to them, and in some cases, people do get sick from COVID and die from COVID. And it is one of those, you know, when you see this stuff pass you by, well, this is my experience. When you see this stuff pass you by in the internet, you're kind of like, well, you know, it's easier to have some shot and for it there, but when you actually think about it, it's like pretty messed up. You know, one could say that anyone dying

unnecessarily is a sad thing, and it's sort of somewhat nihilistic to make fun of people,

“you know, for dying. I think so. I think I'm going to really get behind that idea. Right.”

Yeah, no reservations there. It is. And I get that it's hard to look at what's going on and not sort of fall into nihilism to an extent, because sometimes the, you know, the call is too

strong. But yeah, ultimately, I don't, I don't want to celebrate anyone's death except

possibly one. So there you go. Who shall remain nameless? No, but I do, but I do think like, and this was kind of interesting, because you, you hope I think sometimes when you're trying to deprogram someone that ridicule will work. And, you know, in some cases, I think ridicule does work, but I think most of the time it, it, it doesn't seem to work. And I think when we made this episode, we talked to both the recipient of a Herman K. Namanation. His name is Glenn. He lives in Colorado,

and also the moderators, and we talked to a moderator of the subreddit for the Herman K. Nauar and

“Hammie. We, you know, it was really interesting, because Glenn is, you know, you can sort of”

maybe assume kind of where he's coming from. He's posting a lot of memes on Facebook about the, about how COVID was stupid and fake, et cetera, et cetera. He got nominated for an award, went viral because of that, being nominated for the Herman K. Nauar. And then he got a call from his daughter, who was like, please, please, please, please stop this. Go to the hospital. He, he got sick with COVID. Of course. And she, she was really upset that he had been, you know,

that he had been nominated for the award and gotten gone viral for all this sort of COVID skepticism. And he stuck to his guns. He was being treated with Ivermectin, and he did not end up going to the hospital. But it was so interesting to talk to him. He really reminded me of of my uncles who live in Colorado just in terms of the way he sounded, and it made me sort of feel badly that he had gone viral in this way. But, you know, of course, understanding, you know, some of the things that

he put on Facebook were really misguided. And what we tried to do, because Hammie, the moderator for this Herman K. Nauar had subreddit, actually told us that they had seen evidence of people who got nominated for the award, actually changed their tune and changed the way that they were thinking about this. And so what we tried to do, we didn't end up doing it, but what we'll be tried to do is get them to talk to each other. Mm. That would have been interesting. Yeah,

because like eventually, like, you know, ultimately, like a lot of these people who are like really

upset about this stuff that is happening, and one of the interesting things was that Glenn and Hammie both had long COVID. And so it was like this interesting thing where both of the, you know, they were coming from totally different ends of the spectrum in terms of what they, you know, believed about the disease and the virus and, you know, how to approach it, but they had this kind of like shared experience. And we, we tried to get them to talk to each other. They didn't end up talking

“to each other. But Glenn's daughter was, I think, an example of somebody who was coming from”

into very different place than Glenn. And I think had had a change of heart. So I do think, to, you know, to be more taking COVID much more seriously. So I do think that this stuff can happen. And we have talked to people who have had real changes of heart. We talked to some somebody, we didn't episode about Hassan Piker. Do you know if that guy? No. They call him the Joe Rogan of the left. Oh boy. He's, yeah, he's a, or as I call him, the guy from News Radio of the last.

Yes. Yes. He's somebody who, a lot of people talk to after the most recent presidential election

more legacy media decode what had happened in the election from his perspective obviously. He's,

he's definitely controversial in his own right for some of the views that he holds and, and some of the things that he says while he streams for streams on Twitch for eight hours a day, seven days a week, or whatever it is. It's too many hours, Hassan. Too many hours. But we did, we did, we talked to somebody named Jaden who had grown up in a small town in Arkansas and, and it was very small religious town grew up around pretty, we could say homophobic views, and Jaden eventually threw

this parasocial relationship that he developed with Hassan as a college kid started to question some of the things that he, you know, that he had been taught growing up and eventually, as he,

it was sort of, it was happening at the same time and he was going to college and so his

universe was expanding there because he was going to a university of Arkansas and Fayetteville, which is much, much bigger place than he responds where he grew up. But, you know, the internet was also expanding his understanding of different ideas about American foreign policy, for instance,

“and what was happening in Gaza, for instance. And so like I think over time, it's so tricky”

because at the, on one hand, you're like doing your own research on the internet and you're, you're pulled down these rabbit holes and on the other hand, when you're a universe expands, you can also find people that help you change the way you feel and what I would describe as a positive way sometimes. Hassan's an interesting example too, because in thinking about this topic to talk to you about it, Sarah, I guess I've become more and more thinking along the lines of like

one-on-one conversations and, you know, the idea that a lot of times when people pull themselves out of something that they didn't even realize the, the depths of the whole that they've fallen into, it was one person who didn't give up on them. It was one family member, it was one friend, it was these kinds of conversations that inch their way towards, you know, curious, well-meaning questions with a, with a foundation of trust and rapport there to sort of catch them when they,

“when they get caught in a web of like friction in the conversation and yet I think Hassan,”

and I'm not holding a Hassan personally in this example, but that is an example of some of the, I don't know, the approach that we could take if we were thinking about deep programming large amounts of people, there is a lot to be said for someone who just kind of sets an example that you want to follow and maybe that is a person close to you in your life, maybe that's like a parent or a friend or maybe it's a person on the internet who is not just talking about politics

or not just talking about whatever his fitness regimen, but together there's some model of behavior that you want to emulate and we just need a lot more truth on these platforms and being these sorts of examples of you know, the kind of person you want to see in the world if we're going to the swing things in a more truthful direction then in the one that we're going seem to be going in, I guess I won't be too depressing about it, but it's going to take some combination of better

examples on larger platforms but also just better conversations one on one. Yeah, part of this bigger picture I think is that you know people say they want community but then I think many of us you know in the United States have been raised to be consumers you know more than citizens and that is kind of the culture that we've been given and what has been taught us and if we're trying to combat the sort of cheap I don't know or that the like easily had sense of false comfort that comes from

getting upset about something online and feeling like you're surrounded by people who are as upset as you then you can't combat that with just sort of low effort online platform type stuff.

“The only way to combat that maybe is through actual human connection. Yeah and that's the thing”

that you can't really scale up either. You just have to keep doing it. Yeah and I guess that's going back to sort of the beginning of this conversation and talking about the internet and its role and vacillating between optimism and pessimism on the internet. It's like I feel like maybe the

if not optimism that I feel now it's more of an acceptance of the internet as a tool that is never

ever ever going away and so I'm not feeling like we need to lean into it harder. I'm just looking for ways to harness it to do more good than harm. Yeah and that's a that's a low bar for a lot of people

is like the bar that I am clinging to right now as I try to get more and more offline. Well

accepting this genie that can't be put back in the bottle. Yeah well part of the problem is

that it's actually it is actually a high bar right like in my mind you know we looked at when we we did our series of vaccines and anti-vaxxers we looked a lot at you know Facebook groups and and other online communities where a lot of misinformation exists and I'm not saying that there's plenty of misinformation and disinformation on Reddit as well so they're on all of the platforms but you know Joan Donovan who's a Harvard researcher and or was at the time she's not

a Harvard anymore but she was at the time she said to us you know it's it's hard to make the truth

“go viral you know or some version of that which is which you know is true I think unfortunately”

there's so much more engagement around rage bait or you know whatever you want to call it or however you want to describe it and that's that's a big part of the problem too and so like having the internet do more good than harm is actually a high bar because unfortunately I do think it's sort of leans it means or at least thanks to the folks who have built the tools in the way that they've built them and their propensity for fixing things versus just breaking things and building things

and caring more about the sort of training consumers like your saying Sarah thanks to all of that it is actually harder it is actually a high bar in my mind to to make this stuff do more good than harm I mean this is also kind of why I'll defend that the girl with the buttons because you know

“famously right like if you're writing for Netflix you have to have characters saying what they're”

doing and what the stakes are in the movie all the time because the assumption is that people are looking at their phones yes or washing dishes or something is anyone who watched the rip recently knows right because like how could they do that to Matt and Ben you know it's nothing sacred and um you know and this idea that like we can't expect people to just like sit and think for one second like

I'll always push on the idea of like just like let's let people be a little bored and courage

people to have to sit and wonder we can't write all of our media for like your mom on the day after Thanksgiving who never normally goes to see movies and spends the whole time going who's that and you're like we haven't seen him before it's Gary Sunise and don't go after the girl with the buttons when they're actual climate change deniers out there yeah we were talking as we were sort of preparing for this conversation Sarah and wondering if

either one of us had Ben deprogrammed or feel like we had been programmed and then deprogrammed or

“deprogrammed ourselves at any point in time and just the act of going through that exercise I think”

yeah immediately builds a little bit of extra compassion that is is necessary when doing this exercise because you do realize like we are set up to fail with social media just literally digging its nails into you and pulling you down with the algorithm to make you believe more and more and view more and more of what you might be inclined to watch in a moment of weakness I would encourage anyone to kind of do that thought experiment with themselves coming out of this conversation because

we've sort of all been there even if it's not a government cabal it might just be some weird you know button belief that we've had I was gonna say Sarah's deep programmed me from wanting answers on the button person sorry we're just I'm got a guy coming and let button you citizen can do whatever they want with their buttons I am curious about yeah if you had answers for that when you did that thought experiment or you know is anything that you would want to

talk about here of like yeah because when I when I think about that for myself I think about and this is maybe this is not on such a grand scale but like I've been teaching myself to sleep enough lately

because I like I've always known intellectually that I was supposed to be sleeping more but because

like what we I'm sure we're raised to know in our hearts especially you know there's like so much terminology that I do kind of think social media for being hyper specific enough to come up with and one of them is like a non-sleep supportive family which I'm sure many of us know we're like you

you know and I was raised sort of where you know the the stated goal for me was to achieve highly

“and so even though it was you know implicit even if people were like you should sleep you should”

make healthy choices like you know at school and with teachers and just kind of you know from adults authority figures it felt like they were being like you should get plenty of sleep wink wink now you shouldn't do because if you did that you couldn't do all this stupid stuff we were telling you to do and so I've been training myself to sleep not by teaching myself to left myself enough to do it because that's like a really big goal that I'm working toward

but because I found an app where the numbers turn a nicer color if you have less than five hours

of sleep debt nice and it's like I don't have to have healthy attitudes about myself for my

needs I can just start by liking the app and then I'm using my most frivolous you know I I've become a big believer lately in the idea that like you can train yourself like your your own cute little dog and that you can you can train yourself to do something important for a stupid little reason and I don't know if that's deep programming but it's it's behaviorizing and behaviorizing myself hmm I feel like Amory deprogrammed me from being a person who inadvertently

was was pushing procreation hmm also I want to hear that story we didn't episode about the child free

“community and I think Amory I don't know if you would I don't know if you're a fence sitter”

wow I'm not sure how you would describe yourself at this point I think I'm a fence sitter I think most of my life I was leaning no and the fence sitter on having kids that is and the fence sitter part of me is just the like well we haven't we haven't like taken all of the extremes to

never have kids ever so I'll still identify as a fence sitter even though it just it has not

felt like now is the time well I think Amory over the course of the episode sort of deprogrammed me from like like I think I showed up for the episode being like whatever it's cool for me to say like you'd be a great mom you know what I mean and I think Amory helped me understand the pressure that can be applied culturally especially for women you know with with those kinds of statements and comments right and I still feel like in the episode I was still kind of coming from a place

of like well you know we're close we're good friends in longtime colleagues and you know we're honest with each other and so like it feels not right for me to not tell you how I feel about this if we're talking about it but I think Amory helped me realize how some of that language just more broadly culturally and especially when someone you know who when you're talking to somebody

“who you're close to like you can you should be careful about how you do that and not be putting”

pressure on them unnecessarily and so she I I feel like Amory you you you I maybe that's not to full deprogramming but you really helped me kind of come from a place where I wasn't seeing the sort of truth of it and I think you brought me towards that. Thanks Ben. Yeah yeah let's take a Demi Demi deprogramming. I feel like also part of what you're identifying with that story is the fact that you know and looking at it kind of human relationships and

in this idea of having someone who's not giving up on you as being the antidote there to this kind of like bigger you know technological sweep of rhetoric that people are responding to that like there can be a big cause but maybe not like an equally sweeping solution which is so often the case and only yeah but also that you know that a big part of this is like you know you or anyone else being receptive to the idea of someone being like actually when you say that it like

causes me or you know theoretically another human being to like feel these things that you might not a thought of and then for you the person be like oh I didn't think of that and now I'm thinking of it because someone told me about it and now I know and that just that ability to alter your behavior out of consideration for somebody in a way also feels like the antidote to what feels like to me to be the cause of a lot of conspiracy theory fandom I guess which is the idea that like the

man is oppressing you which like he surely is and and therefore in order to fight back against being told what to do that you're gonna rebel and I feel like it feels if you feel oppressed by being told what to do then if you can be receptive to the idea that someone is not telling you they're asking

can understand that distinction then that can mean a lot. I think my example of deprogramming is

in a very squishy place and I'll offer it up with the esterist that I'm I feel like I'm a real work in progress and I'm still figuring out. Well I'm finished and I'm just so that's really embarrassing for you yeah. Sarah's fully baked. Yeah the toothpick came out clean. I'm this particular issue. Are we all but on this particular issue? So I probably my least popular opinion has to do with the fact that I'm vegan and it's not something that I really talk about publicly but it is because people

would put you in the stocks if you did. Yeah it is it is a part of my life and and yet I feel a

lot of feelings about it and I get really sort of hurt when I still hear veganism being the

butt of jokes among a group of people that I would expect to be making it the butt of jokes and it's still like still you hear on certain public radio programs even jokes being made at like vegans being this warrior group of people which is insane. When I actually really do think creamy to pay attention to factory farming and our planet dying and so a lot of times I feel like a crazy person for feeling this way and I'm aware that social media this is also a place for the

ideas or the opinions are very strong the ideas are very polarized about this and I have felt myself getting pulled like further down a particular rabbit hole with regards to my veganism and I am actively trying to figure out what is the way that I want to exist in the world and if these these beliefs that I do hold dear how do you resonate with people and how how do you feel all

“those feelings without letting yourself become I think as Jeterth we were talking about before”

with Q and on he said that when he was really in the depths of Q he resented other people who didn't believe what he believed and he he didn't understand how they couldn't see what he saw and that's a really painful place to be in and I'm not trying to compare my you know my feelings towards him to the extent of his but I am still trying to figure out what social media do I want to pay attention to what is helpful to me in figuring out how I want to exist in the world in this way and how can I

maybe help other people understand some truths without thinking that I'm a crazy vegan and wanting to just you know shut me down altogether. Well and also I feel like and this is you know obviously people are different from each other there's you know positive stereotypes are annoying too but like I feel based on my experience that like most vegans I've interacted with do not want to bother

anyone and then in fact people love to tell them about how they could never not eat meat and how

much meat they ate and how great it is. Amen it feels like there's some projection happening there for her house because like what we really hate what we claim to hate is someone proselytizing to us and of course that's true. I

“certainly don't like it but I think what a lot of people don't like is someone quietly abstaining”

from something and not even talking about it because it just like bothers us to think of somebody I don't know not being annoying about doing something that we find difficult there's like a defensive offense that is head spittingly frustrating please stop bothering vegans and also I know that like the numbers for vegans have probably held pretty steady for a really long time which I love is yeah but as food becomes more and more expensive we're all going to be eating vegan more

whether we realize it or not so we've got some great recipe be nice exactly be nice so you won't get the recipes also like Emory really is like she was talking about before trying to kind of like

“whatever live as an example and I think Emory you really do that with how you live as a vegan I think”

you're really really good at that it's a quiet strong and very respected position that you take to me if that makes sense thank you I'm trying to be doing great you're still figuring it out you know every once in a while when we're trying to go out to eat and you're like what about this

it's great you know we're figuring it out yeah exactly but no I think that's great and um Ben Emory

this has been so I don't know just like a very very hopeful conversation for me and I hope that this has brought some hope to our listeners too and obviously you don't have to talk to your family you don't have to talk to anybody but we all need community and you deserve to get the closeness and

“the connection that you need to just say you know and in terms of listening to more endless”

throughout is actually if people like this episode and want to know where to start what are some

episodes that you can recommend to people oh man I'm like I'm like ready for the the newsies fanfic episode um we should do we should delve find Sarah's old posts like there's some great literature and the newsies fanfiction archives and I'm not even talking about the one I started about what if the newsies won on the Oregon trail because I did not finish it maybe I will this year we don't know love to hear a song about dying of dysentery that's great imagine having to deal with all the

problems of being a music and then dysentery gets you because beauty sad yeah we've got a couple of episodes that I feel like we usually send people to one is called we want plates and there's a follow-up to that one called I love that we want plates subreddit those people do deserve plates

“yes totally same if you want to hear us go on a journey into the woods looking for a mountain”

of abandoned dishware I tell this is the the episode for you and the the second part where we may or may not have found the dishware called pile of crackers beautiful

Amory didn't amazing one called the artist known about a Madeleine Langle book cover oh yeah

wrinkle in time the most famous book cover for wrinkle in time I feel like that book cover probably creeped me out as a child definitely creepy I think you you and everyone else and it was uncredited up until up until that episode that we made oh my gosh so you're you're putting right

“what once went wrong you're doing a quantum leap exactly we're wrinkle in time I love these topics”

that you're describing especially after the kind of you know the more serious kind of ground we've we've tried in this episode because the world is just so odd and amidst everything just the little the ways that humans I don't know like humans do the most awful things I'm actionable yes and yet when you look at us as a species like for the most part I remain convinced that we are not even good just weird weird insurance in our eccentricity you know and I just

I love Madeleine that allows us to see that and I feel like you're doing that with your show well thank you may we change in many many many ways but not that one yeah that was our episode thank you so much for listening thank you for being here thank you to Miranda Zikler who's our editor and producer and the coal or teas who's our administrative assistant we also have a new bonus episode that you can listen to about all things dolls creepy dolls haunted dolls dolls with dolls and a

doll survey for our listeners with our guest Chelsea Weber Smith of American Astaria and confirmed that on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions thank you again for being here we'll see you next time